


Yet Still More Doom & Despair (2019)

by okapi



Series: July Watson's Woes Prompts [5]
Category: Basil of Baker Street - All Media Types, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 22:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 14,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19450858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Entries for the July Watson's Woes daily writing prompts. All chapters stand alone and ratings vary!





	1. BOOM! (The Great Mouse Detective. Rating: Teen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** BOOM!  
>  **Universe:** The Great Mouse Detective/Basil of Baker Street  
>  **Pairing:** Basil/Dawson  
>  **Rating:** Teen for mild suggestiveness  
>  **Length:** 300  
>  **Prompt:** Boom! Explosions, literal and otherwise. Include at least one in your work today.  
>  **Summary:** Dawson returns home to find something unusual hanging from the ceiling.

The door blew open.  
  
“How were your rounds this morning, Doctor?” called Basil without turning around to see blustery winds sweep his companion across the threshold.  
  
“Quite the usual,” replied Dawson cheerily. He removed his coat and hat and caught sight of something new, something which gave every appearance of belonging to a trapeze act, hanging from the ceiling of their cosy mousehole. “Has the circus come to Baker Street?”  
  
“Not quite. It’s for us. After the last time.”  
  
Dawson’s eyebrows rose, and he blushed beneath his thick brown fur. His whiskers twitched, and his voice fell to a low rumble as he said,  
  
“I should like to try it out, my dear Basil.”  
  
“You may get your chance very soon.” Basil was still hunched over his workbench, his eyes fixed on a transfer of liquid from one flask to another.  
  
“Well, well, well,” said Dawson. He smoothed a fastidious hand down the front of his suit and loosened his collar. “I have no complaints, naturally, but there are benefits to adding a bit of spice to things. Any couple can fall into a rut.” He surveyed the apparatus overhead. “But do you think it’s wise to install it here? Not much privacy to speak of. Mrs. Judson might come in at any moment.”  
  
“She’s visiting her sister for the afternoon—thankfully.”  
  
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then,” said Dawson. He shirked out of his jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat.  
  
“Now,” said Basil, straightening up and using a pair of tongs to set the flask carefully on a lit burner, “let’s add heat.”  
  
“Ready when you are,” said Dawson with a grin.  
  
BOOM!  
  
When the smoke cleared, Dawson was clinging to one hanging bar, Basil to the other.  
  
“You see, Dawson, they were perfectly placed.”  
  
Dawson coughed. “I see, Basil.”


	2. Right Ho, Hound! (ACD. Wodehouse-style. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Right Ho, Hound!  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Pairing:** Holmes & Watson  
>  **Length:** 650  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Prompt:** "Oh bother," said Watson, staring down Reichenbach Falls: Write any version of Sherlock Holmes in the style of another author.  
>  **Notes:** A P.G. Wodehouse version of Holmes & Watson, this one with Bertie as Holmes.  
>  **Summary:** An old school chum, James "Morty-Bundy" Mortimer, comes to Sherlie for help.

_“Mister Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”_  
  
“Right ho.”  
  
“Right ho?! Is that all you can say?”  
  
“Stop looking at me like a Peke who's got a chump chop caught in its throat, Bundy!”  
  
Despite my stern reproof, James “Morty-Bundy” Mortimer, M.R.C.S., continued to gawk while his curly-haired spaniel, Excelsior, gave a yip of what might have been canine indignation. Being soft-hearted when it comes to man’s best friend, I slipped the beast two rashers from the plate on the table.  
  
“It’s a corkin’ good yarn,” I said, soothingly while lighting an after-breakfast cigarette and surreptitiously, if that’s the word I want, passing the pup another savory strip. “Just the stuff to give the troops. Put us down for a pair of front row seats opening night when it splashes in the West End. Isn’t that right, Watson?”  
  
“A very stimulating tale,” agreed Watson as he shimmered in with a fresh pot of coffee. He issued a yip of indignation of his own when his bright blue e’s alit upon his empty plate. “My bacon, Holmes?”  
  
I waved a dismissive cigarette as Excelsior licked his unrepentant lips.  
  
“But aren’t you going to help?” cried Bundy, strangely unmoved by the Mystery of Watson’s Missing Breakfast Pork.  
  
Now I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but this Bundy was a tall, thin cove with a long nose like a beak and anything resembling a plaintive plea that escaped his lips came out as a squawk. He could’ve been a magistrate with a nose like that, but he’d decided to go into one of the helping professions instead. He was in possession of a pair of sparkling grey eyes which were set close together and behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that went out of fashion the day after Mister Pickwick started wearing them.  
  
“Help?” I issued a firm _nolle pro sequi_ with my eyes.  
  
“But we were at school together, Sherlie!”  
  
“I only went to that school for two years! And it isn’t like any legendary hellhound of yours is a legendary hellhound of mine, Bundy!”  
  
I wasn’t entirely certain the code of the Woosters extended to the diabolically supernatural, and I was not prepared to test the matter.  
  
Bundy snorted. “What am I to do about the Baskerville heir, Sir Henry? He’s crossed the Atlantic and arrives at Waterloo in an hour.”  
  
“Well, first, I’d tell him to leave his Napoleonic code at home.”  
  
“Sherlie!”  
  
“But why come to me? Go to the Scotland Yard! By the by, I’d go to Lestrade, he’s my good and deserving Inspector, not to be confused with Gregson, my Inspector who chews broken bottles and has been known to howl at the full moon.”  
  
“Sherlie, please. Dont turn your back on a pal."  
  
I folded as I always do when a chap is in the soup.  
  
“Oh, all right. Watson, look sharp. It’s time for all good and faithful companions to come to the aid of the party.”  
  
“So it would seem, Holmes.”  
  
“Listen, Bundy, first things first, I think you should tell ‘Our American Cousin’ he’s understudying for the role of Lincoln and see if he still wants to go on with the show.”  
  
“And if he does?” insisted Bundy.  
  
“Watson will join your party to Dartmoor.”  
  
Watson went a bit stuffed frog but said,  
  
“Very well, Holmes.”  
  
“Sherlie, can’t you come yourself?”  
  
“No, old thing, it’s a week before The Drones’ annual Dionysia and I’m playing Yum-Yum in Catsmeat’s G&S revival, but don’t fret, Watson will keep me abreast. He’s launched me out of the consommé more than once, and I’m certain he will do the same for you. Look at the back of his head! Bulges! All that fish he eats!”  
  
“Thank you, Doctor Watson, I’m so very grateful,” said Bundy.  
  
“I shall endeavour to give satisfaction, sir.”  
  
And with that, Excelsior rose to the occasion—jumping into Watson’s lap and licking his face.


	3. Pixy Cove (ACD. Holmes/Watson. Mature.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Pixy Cove  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Pairing:** Holmes/Watson  
>  **Rating:** Mature for masturbation (not graphic imo but ymmv)  
>  **Length:** 660  
>  **Prompt:** Bloody weather!: Include some meteorological elements in today's  
> entry.  
>  **Summary:** On a hot summer day, Holmes and Watson swim to Pixy Cove.

The shock of the cold water was the perfect antidote to the oppressive heat of the day. As always, I followed in Holmes’s wake, mimicking his smooth, easy strokes. We cut through the sea as if we were born to the element and to each other. My lungs inflated and deflated, my muscles strained and relaxed, pushing and pulling, propelling my body forward, through the briny soup. That I was thoroughly ignorant of our destination bothered me not in the least. I would go where Holmes led.

And where he led turned out to be a short length of sunny shoreline, miraculously, without any sign of human presence. No bathing machines or picnic rubbish. The beach was bare, and not one boat bobbed in the waves.

“Pixy Cove,” Holmes panted when we had collapsed onto the sand and were catching our breath.

The sun was strong. With one hand, I shielded my eyes from its glare, then rolled onto my side to face Holmes.

“Well done, Watson. I knew you had it in you.”

I smiled, then cast a look over my shoulder.

“We’re quite alone,” said Holmes, reading my thoughts.

Maybe it was the rush of our swim or the broiling weather or the faraway caw of a sea bird, which only seemed to draw attention to our seclusion, but I finally gave in to a long-ignored impulse.

I looked at Holmes. I looked at him without embarrassment or disguise or artifice. I studied his nude form from head to toe and toe to head, and let my admiration and, yes, my lust shine forth.

God, he was beautiful. I was reminded of carvings and sculptures and other works of art that begged to be touched.

When my eyes met his, I found the want reflected there to be just as warm and urgent as my own and easily as hot as breath of the merciless sun which baked us both.

Holmes had been looking at me, too. He looked at everything, of course, so the novelty was not there. Nevertheless, I was struck with a strong, unusual desire to preen.

Holmes beat me to it, naturally. He always does.

He pushed up on one elbow, spat generously on his palm, and began to stroke his prick. I watched the muscles of his arm move, and I could not help but think of way he moved through the water and the way he passed bow across strings, the way he did everything.

Graceful.

Even when he was frigging himself for an audience, Sherlock Holmes was graceful.

“Oh, God.”

Holmes closed his eyes and groaned my name. His prick spat milky streaks on his curled fingers and the patch of sand between us.

The air was thick and still and hot.

I grunted. It was inquiry. Holmes replied with flattering rapidity and eagerness.

“Yes.” Then he added, in a plaintive tone that alone would have brought me to full mast had I not already been thoroughly aroused, “Please.”

My own performance was not nearly as fine. I frig like a soldier, quick and without embellishments, and not even the quiet comfort of the moment nor the privacy of surroundings could alter a life’s conditioning.

When I’d found my release, one side of Holmes’s mouth curled in a sweet, lopsided smile.

We might have held each other’s gaze in companionable, contented silence for a short eternity, but the sun that day was a cruel bedfellow and our pleasant stupor burned off like morning dew.

“Shall we make our return journey?” asked Holmes, his grimace reflecting my own reluctance and growing discomfort.

“Yes,” I said, longing for the cool slap of the sea.

The swim back was just as refreshing but somehow not as long. I was on the point of suggesting another when news of the discovery of Arlena Marshall’s body reached us by frantic messenger, and Holmes and I were once more absorbed in an astounding bit of crime solving, and our excursion to Pixy Cove relegated to hazy memory.


	4. Ratiocination. [Link only]

**Title:** Ratiocination  
**Universe:** ACD (& Edgar Allan Poe)  
**Length** 2000  
**Rating:** Explicit for sex  
**Prompt:** Nothing So Good As A Good Book: Include a favorite book or work of literature in your entry today.  
**Pairings** Holmes/C. Auguste Dupin; Holmes/Watson  
**Notes:** May-December relationship, oral & anal sex, reminiscing  
**Summary:** At the news of Dupin's death, Holmes is moved to tell Watson the truth. 

[On AO3.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479826)


	5. Villanelle. (Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title** : WW #5  
>  **Universe** : ACD  
>  **Poetic form:** Villanelle  
>  **Length:** 177  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Prompt:** Photo prompt. 

The grey fog swallows all. The darkness seems to know  
a doctor hastening on, a great wool coat drawn tight.  
How late the trembling hour! How wan the streetlamp glow!

A world of pale and pall. A gossamer tableau.  
The doctor hurries on, so heedless of his plight:  
the grey fog swallows all the darkness seems to know.

What trouble calls him out? Just where has he to go?  
The doctor soldiering on, through ghastly cold, despite   
how late the trembling hour, how wan the streetlamp glow.

What dangers. What strangers. What summons, three of crow  
would drive the doctor on, through insubstantial light  
the grey fog swallows? All the darkness seems to know.

Miasmic veil. Dank shroud. Magician’s portmanteau.  
The doctor scurries on, regardless of the sleight:  
how late the trembling hour, how wan the streetlamp glow.

Breath catches in his throat. Sense comes too late, too slow.  
How pitiless the night! How stout its appetite!  
The grey fog swallows all; the darkness seems to know  
how late the trembling hour, how wan the streetlamp glow.


	6. Kitsungi [Link only]

**Title:** [Kintsugi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7844581/chapters/46629181)  
 **Universe:** My Dearly Beloved Detective (1986)  
 **Rating:** Gen  
 **Length:** 221b  
 **Prompt:** In emergency break glass: Include broken glass in today's entry. It may be an accident, a clue, however you wish to interpret it.  
 **Summary:** Shirley summons Jane to a kintsugi exhibit at a museum. Post-canon.


	7. Bored at Dinner. (ACD. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title: Bored at dinner  
> Universe: ACD  
> Rating: Gen  
> Length: 400  
> Prompt: Lost in Translation: Use a non-English phrase or quote in today's entry. (In case anyone is participating with fanworks in a language other than English, use a quote in a language other than the one the entry is  
> in.)  
> Summary: Watson is bored at dinner with the Holmes brothers.  
> Note: The proverb is in Kinyarwanda, the native language of the country of Rwanda.

The food and wine were excellent, and for an old soldier like me, that should’ve been sufficient to call an evening pleasant.  
  
Conversation started out easy enough with Holmes recounting to his brother the details of his latest case. I interjected here and there, but in truth, I’d done little more than hold Holmes’s coat, in one instance quite literally, so I hadn’t much substantive to offer the feast of reason and flow of soul. It had been a case of financial fraud, which, naturally, interested the elder Holmes, clever government accountant that he was.  
  
After that, the Holmes brothers moved on to other topics, such as the subjects of Holmes’s latest scientific monographs and the latest addition to Mycroft Holmes’s collection of bone china. They sparred a bit at deductions, then began to reminisce. I listened to news and old tales about people I would never meet and, in some cases, could never meet because they’d been pushing up daisies for decades.   
  
I ate and drank and wool-gathered, letting their articulate patter, like a steady summer rain, fade into the background.   
  
But, at last, the wool I’d been gathering began to itch. I surfaced and realised that they were discussing great literature and making a sport of quoting lines at each other. I must’ve missed the easy ones, the ones in English, for they had switched to foreign tongues and were correcting each other’s pronunciation and interpretation.  
  
I looked pointedly at my watch, then slapped my palm to the tabletop.  
  
“ _N’uhigimye aba avuze_.”  
  
For the first time since the soup, they both looked at me, speechless. Then they looked at each other and exchanged silent glances.  
  
“I’m afraid you have us, Doctor,” said Mycroft genially.  
  
“A little something an African fellow taught me in New Delhi, along with how to read the faces of inscrutable savages, which are, as it turns out, not inscrutable or savage after all. It means, loosely, ‘Even the man who hums is saying something.” And what I am saying is ‘Good night.’ Thank you for a beautiful meal, Mister Holmes.” I nodded to Mycroft. “I’ll see you whenever I see you, Mister Holmes.” I nodded at Holmes.  
  
Then I pushed back from the table, rose, and strode out of the private dining room, vowing to never accept another invitation like the one that had brought me out that night, fish and soup be damned. 


	8. The Zaftig Detective (ACD. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title: The Zaftig Detective  
> Universe: ACD  
> Length: 500  
> Rating: Gen  
> Notes: featuring OFC, Sadie Hawkins among other canon characters :)   
> Prompt: Against the stereotype. While in 1850s plumpness was considered to be synonymous with good health and beauty, by the end of the century the trend became quite the opposite: “Obesity always carries with it physical and often mental weakness…” Address this stereotype and how it might affect a character in your work today.  
> Summary: A young detective faints at 221B.

When the smelling salts and the brandy had been applied, the young lady stretched along, and spilling over the side of, the sofa of 221B opened her eyes.  
  
“My dear Miss Hawkins,” began Watson with gentle censor. “You shall never be as great a detective as your hero,” he cast a look at Holmes, who was looming behind him, “if you don’t learn to loosen your corset.”  
  
“Breathing is essential to good detective work,” added Holmes.   
  
Miss Hawkins blushed. “I’m so frightfully sorry, and I did so want to make a good impression on you and Mister Holmes. It isn’t easy maintaining a girlish figure, especially when you’re a girl built like a steamship.” She added a self-deprecating chuckle and accepted Doctor Watson’s assistance in sitting up.  
  
“It is a cross that I confess I, nor any other man in this society, has ever had to bear, Miss Hawkins,” said Holmes, “and that is not just, not in the least, but I don’t see why you couldn’t put your girth to your advantage.”  
  
“How so?”   
  
“Well, my work often involves surreptitious observation in disguise. There are disguises that a woman of your build could adopt that are beyond me, roles that go quite unnoticed by most of the populous.”  
  
“Charwoman, you mean?”  
  
“Precisely so. You have a good mind and good reflexes—”  
  
“When you aren’t trussed like a Christmas goose,” interjected Doctor Watson good-naturedly.  
  
“—and if a case arises where I think your talents could be employed, I will not hesitate to call upon you.”  
  
“And I shall be at the ready, sir!”

* * *

"And?” asked the disembodied voice from the darkness.  
  
If Sadie Hawkins was surprised at a stranger hiding in her boardinghouse bedroom, she gave no sign of it. She carefully removed her gloves, tugging finger by finger.  
  
“And it went like a dream. All chivalry and solicitousness. Even a bit of avuncular advice on how to use my bulk,” Sadie shifted her ample bosom back and forth, “to my advantage. As if I didn’t learn that on me father’s knee!”   
  
“He will ask you to help on the next case?”  
  
“Yeah. ‘And I’ll shall be at the ready!’” Sadie cried in the sweet falsetto she’d used in the Baker Street rooms. “Good night, Professor. Us zaftig beauties need our sleep.”

* * *

Sadie slipped the pistol under her pillow. The knife, as always, was strapped to the side of her bed.   
  
She smiled at nothing and thought.   
  
She was going to do something that even the great Sherlock Holmes had not been able to do: bring down the evil Professor Moriarty. Really, it was rather pathetic, how she was underestimated by heroes and villains alike. But crossing and double crossing and triple crossing came quite naturally. It went on and on. Like too-tight corset lacing.   
  
It wasn’t over ‘til the fat lady sang, and, by Jove, did Sadie Hawkins have some pipes on her, pipes the world was going to hear.  
  
“Charwoman!” she huffed and closed her eyes. 


	9. Nail clippers [Link only]

**Title:** [Nail Clippers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2155731/chapters/46778518)  
 **Fandom:** BBC Sherlock  
 **Length:** 221b  
 **Rating:** Gen  
 **Prompt:** On Your Left: The object closest to you on your left is now your prompt. Include it or use it as inspiration for today's entry.  
 **Notes:** Gender/sex swap. fem!Sherlock/fem!John.   
**Summary:** After a case at a nail salon.


	10. The Bow of Glen Albyn. (ACD. Gen. Casefic.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** The Bow of Glen Albyn  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Length:** 1300  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Notes:** The plot is G. K. Chesterton's "The Honour of Israel Gow." Prompt in the end notes.  
>  **Summary:** Inspector Alec MacDonald (of _The Valley of Fear_ ) asks Holmes and Watson to accompany him to visit his uncle, who has come upon a strange circumstance in the castle of Glen Albyn.

“Why is it so hot?” I asked of nothing and no one in particular.

“ **Summertime. And the living is easy** , or easier, if you don’t press yourself to the street-facing window like that, my dear Watson,” answered Holmes.

“But if I didn’t stand at the window, I couldn’t observe the interesting scene outside. What does oscillation on the pavement by a member of Scotland Yard mean?”

Holmes joined me and peered down into the street.

“It still means an affaire de coeur, Watson, but I am not prepared to speculate which comes first in Mister Mac’s big heart, queen or Queen or country. It’s clearly not a Yard matter. Oh, but he’s made his choice. Quick, let’s ready ourselves for **an unexpected visitor**.”

* * *

“…My uncle, the provost, is not a fanciful man, Mister Holmes. His summons was urgent, and I daren’t delay my departure. The Yard thinks it’s a **flisk** , but they’ve seen fit to give me four days to resolve it, at my own expense, naturally. My bag is at the station, waiting. Will you and Doctor Watson join me? If I can’t resolve the matter in the allotted time, or beg for more, then you’re the only ones that I trust to leave behind to set things to right and keep me informed. It is a vexing affair.”

I didn’t hear Holmes’s reply. I was already packing. I knew that the combination of flattery and puzzle, genuine puzzle for Inspector Alec MacDonald was too respectful of Holmes to engage him on a mere trifle, was one Holmes would never be able to resist.

But I had my own reason for wanting to join Inspector MacDonald: surely the strange castle of Glen Albyn, wherever it was in Scotland, had to be cooler, mercifully, blessedly cooler than London.

* * *

“ **Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight** ,” I mused as I gazed out the train window at the crimson sunset.

“Place yourself among the flock, Watson, and sleep,” urged Holmes. “I don’t know exactly what awaits us, but I want you rested, regardless.”

* * *

What awaited us was the stuff of **dreams** or nightmares or romantic ballads.

The end of the word was not white, as the polar explorers have taught us, but grey. Thick, grey, fast-moving clouds threatened the grey Scotch valley in which was sunk the grey castle of Glen Albyn. The turrets and spires and slanted roofs of the castle called to mind a bevy of pointy witch’s hat and the surrounding woods looked like a murder of crows.

It was cool, no, it was cold and damp.

I was relieved. And I was worried. I shivered and remembered a line of Tennyson about four grey walls and four grey towers and wondered if it was the doom or the curse that would come upon me.

Holmes drew the grey Scotch plaid around my shoulders in a positively matronly manner. Under his breath he muttered,

“No ghost need apply, remember?”

It was a reference to the Baskerville case, an **apposite** reminder that purported supernatural devilry could have a very human source, and I should not be so quick to forget it.

I shook off my **flight** of fancy and, glad I’d worn my sturdiest boots, followed Holmes and Inspector MacDonald up the dark-soiled path to the castle entrance.

_As green grass is to the wandering flock,_

_so is gold to family Garioch._

That was the country-side rhyme attributed to the Gariochs, the family name of those who that had lived in the castle of Glen Albyn for centuries. All the lords of the castle had been of the ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ variety, but the lineage had ended with the last Earl—last and late, or so the provost, Inspector MacDonald’s uncle, claimed.

Some weeks earlier, the earl, who had always been somewhat of a recluse, was thought to have disappeared entirely from public view. His manservant, his only servant, had sworn to all who inquired that his master wasn’t at home, but no one had seen the earl leave.

Finally, the provost and the minister had been moved to investigate. When, at last, they breeched the stately hall, they found its proprietor already in his final resting place. He’d been put in his coffin by the only other inhabitant, who was gardener, butler, valet, cook, housemaid, and, apparently, undertaker.

His name was Bow.

We passed Bow, at vigorous work with his spade among the potatoes, as we approached the grand door. His was a blank stare on a blank face. He was reportedly deaf, but my long life as a doctor, soldier, man of the world, and companion to a great detective had disavowed me of **sophism** that lacking one sense meant lacking any and all of them, including the common one.

I held back and waved and made a gesture of greeting. Bow blinked, gave a curt nod, then resumed his hoeing.

Fair enough.

I hurried to catch up with the others.

I met the provost and the minister, and they led us to the strange **amalgamate** of items which they’d found: one, candles but not one candlestick; two, diamonds, loose like pebbles; and three, a large, ornate Bible from which every mention of God had been excised with the precision of a surgeon.

I confess to a **paroxysm** of dread.

“Devil worship?”

“Perhaps,” said Holmes cautiously.

“Oh, dear God!”

We followed the provost who followed the sound of the minister’s exclamation.

Downstairs, I began, like a fool, to long for a bit of metropolitan summer.

“The head is missing! It was there yesterday!”

“It most certainly was!” agreed the provost.

I followed the minister back upstairs, leaving Holmes and Inspector MacDonald and his uncle to gather clues.

As I surfaced, I saw the end of a hoe dance by a large window. I set out to befriend him.

It was hard work. I mean, quite literally, Bow put me to work on the potatoes, and very soon, I wasn’t feeling the cold at all. After about two hours of this, all the while wondering what exactly Holmes was getting up to inside, I’d learned a few gestures, signs with hands that Bow seemed to understand well enough. He made a point of steering my efforts away from a certain row, which, of course, only served to arouse my curiosity. Though I tried not to betray my interest, I did see, or thought I saw, a strange lump at the end of the row.

“Watson! I found it! Come!”

I took my leave of Bow, who thanked me in his own silent way, and raced towards a waving Holmes.

“What?”

“The thing that fills the **lacuna**!”

“Which is?”

“A will. And a story.”

“…and so because the earl believed he’d found the one true honest man in the world in Bow, he promised Bow, upon his death, all the gold of Glen Albyn, of which the family, known for their gold-loving ways had quite a bit. So, since the earl’s death, Bow has been extracting all the gold in the castle for himself. The gold settings of the diamonds, but not the diamonds themselves.”

“The candlesticks but not the candles!” I cried.

“And even the gold from the Bible.”

“Good Lord!”

“Just so. And the head, according to these men,” Holmes indicated the provost and minister, “has a gold tooth in it.”

Remembering the lump at the end of the row of potatoes, I said, “I think I know where it might be buried, Holmes.”

“No doubt the good fellow will put it back as soon as we leave.”

Hearty thanks were handed all around as Holmes and I prepared to leave.

“Holmes…”

“What say you to a highland flisk of our own, Watson?”

“By a cool loch?”

Holmes hummed.

I say, “Och aye the noo!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt** Words and Phrases: Use at least three of the following words and phrases in your work today. Use all of them, and you’re halfway to the All the Words bonus point for this year.  
> 1\. Dreams  
> 2\. Red sky at night shepherds delight  
> 3\. Summer time and the living is easy  
> 4\. An unexpected visitor  
> 5\. Flight  
> 6\. Flisk  
> 7\. Sophism  
> 8\. Amalgamate  
> 9\. Paroxysm  
> 10\. Lacuna  
> 11\. Apposite


	11. Men in Kilts. (BBC Johnlock. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title: Men in Kilts  
>  **Fandom:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 500  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Notes:** Meet-cute AU. Sherlock/John.  
>  **Prompt:** So Many AUs, So Little Time: Magic? Sci-fi? Mythological beings? Aliens? Cyborgs? Coffeeshops? Cats? The choice (or choices) are up to you. Follow in the footsteps of the BBC, CBS, the creators of Sherlock Hound,  
> and so many others, and set Holmes and Watson in an alternate universe.  
>  **Summary:** Mrs. Hudson hires John, who works for the Men in Kilts housekeeping service.

“Mrs. Hudson! ’Men in Kilts’?” Sherlock crossed the threshold and waved in the direction of the white van parked outside.   
  
“Sherlock!”  
  
Sherlock’s eyes widened in horror. The sound was coming from upstairs!   
  
“No, no, no,” he chanted as he raced up the steps. “No housekeeping service—kilted, saronged, or doused nothing but all the perfumes of Arabia—in my rooms!”  
  
“Now, Sherlock, please,” said Mrs. Hudson in a soothing tone. “John was so efficient that he had a few minutes to spare, and he agreed to do a bit up here.”   
  
“NO!” cried Sherlock. “Not my dust! Dust is eloquent!”  
  
The man in the kilt on the ladder turned. “Sorry, your eloquence is here.” He held up a filthy rag. “Cobwebs, too!”  
  
“ARRGH!” Sherlock gripped his hair with two hands. “Mrs. Hudson, you—”  
  
“Hey!” barked John. He descended the ladder, then stood before Sherlock with his arms crossed over his chest and added in a warning tone, “I’ll ask you to rethink how you address this nice lady who does you the courtesy of allowing you live under her roof.”  
  
Sherlock studied the man and felt his annoyance turned to something else, equally warm and, yes, a bit annoying. Oh, treacherous transport!   
  
“I don’t like other people messing with my things,” Sherlock sounded like a sulky child and for once felt a bit bad about it.  
  
The man in the kilt threw a glance about the cluttered sitting room and kitchen. “Yeah, I can see that. I’m John, by the way.”  
  
“Sherlock.”   
  
They shook hands, and Sherlock dwelled a moment too long on the firmness of John’s grip.   
  
John smiled at Mrs. Hudson. “Anything else before I pack it up?”  
  
Mrs. Hudson shot a look at the corner of the ceiling beyond John’s head and pointed, “Perhaps. That is, if Sherlock will allow?”  
  
Would Sherlock allow this attractive man to climb a ladder and remove a thick patch of cobwebs? He inclined his head in a way that he hoped was charming and said simply,  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Sherlock took his place at Mrs. Hudson’s side and realised that his landlady had streaks of genius herself. They exchanged a single glance as John, his back to them, repositioned the ladder and climbed up.   
  
He did have nice legs, very nice legs which probably led to a very nice…  
  
“Done!” said John triumphantly. Then he looked at his watch. “Last of it, I’m afraid. I’ve another appointment.”  
  
“Thank you so much, John. My friend Marie spoke so highly of the service, and you did not disappoint.”   
  
“Great. And anytime that hip's bothering you and you don’t feel up to it, just give us a ring, yeah?”  
  
Say something, say something, something clever, memorable…  
  
“I’m a detective,” blurted Sherlock.   
  
John smiled a wide, warm, utterly Man-in-a-Kilt smile.  
  
“I love detectives (and detective stories). You give us a ring, too, if you want some help with this.” John’s wave took in the whole room.  
  
And with that, and a wink, he left, with his ladder—and Sherlock's heart.


	12. Mrs. (ACD. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Mrs.  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Length:** 200  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Characters:** Mrs. Hudson, Doctor Watson, and another.  
>  **Notes:** Crack. Reference to "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier": The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.  
>  **Summary:** Mrs. Hudson passes a Reverend on the stairs.

Mrs. Hudson opened the door to the sitting room with trepidation.  
  
“Doctor Watson, I may be wrong, but, going out the front door, was that Reverend—?”  
  
“Yes, Mrs. Hudson. He was very kind to have adjusted his schedule and arrived before noon to perform the rites so, I’m pleased to say, it is official.”   
  
He turned and beamed. Mrs. Hudson stared, agog, at the object of the good doctor’s adoration.   
  
It was the sculpture of an upper body sitting on a pedestal of a silver tray which rested on a small table in the middle of the room. The sweet, heady aroma that filled the sitting room told Mrs. Hudson that work of art wasn’t made of clay or stone, but rather cake, cake with alarming shades of icing decorating various sections, cake that had been carved and assembled and decorated with a preternatural skill, cake that recalled to her mind a certain wax bust that she’d once been asked to turn.  
  
“I can’t believe it!”  
  
“I know,” admitted Doctor Watson. “I can’t believe it either. Isn’t it wonderful what they do with marzipan these days? And I have finally achieved my long-held dream of _desserting Holmes for wife!_ ”


	13. 16 Again. (Genderswap BBC Johnlock. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** 16 Again  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock AU  
>  **Length:** 1100  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Notes:** Genderswap.   
> **Summary:** A teenager shows up in John's surgery in a very familiar coat, claiming to be Sherlock Holmes.
> 
> **Prompt:** Ah Youth! Entries today should include a main character as a child. Whether this is literal, figurative, as a memory or backstory, or via some deaging hootenannies, all is fair play.

“Good morning, I’m Doctor Watson, and you’re…”

“Sherlock Holmes.”

John closed the door behind her. The girl had familiar grey eyes and thick dark hair that might have hand a familiar wave if it had not been cut so short.

“Interesting name,” remarked John dryly.

The girl was wearing a coat that was far too large for her. A very, very familiar coat.

John grabbed the girl by the lapels and turned the left side of the coat inside out. The tell-tale singe mark was there. John’s gut twisted in a knot as she released the girl.

“It’s me, John. It’s Sherlock. Please, listen.”

“Is this a joke?” John pulled out her mobile and tapped, her eyes fixed on the girl’s face. “Not funny.”

Something beeped.

The girl produced a mobile from the pocket of the coat. A very, very familiar mobile.

“I know this is hard…” she began.

The knot twisted tighter.

“Who are you working for?!” demanded John. “What do you want?! Where have you taken her?!”

“Listen, John. It’s not Moriarty. You know what I’ve been working on recently?”

John’s brow furrowed. “Antidote?”

“That’s what I told you, but,” the girl shrugged, “it was actually an antidote to aging, a youth elixir. And I decided to test on myself.”

“Where is Sherlock?! She would never have given her phone and her coat over willingly.”

“Please, John, it’s me. I drank the stuff and woke up like this.”

“No. No and no. This is a trick or a joke or a trap. I saw you this morning.”

“What did you see?”

John tilted her head. A lump in a bed. She’d only peeked in just before heading out.

“I was at Barts last night, using the chem lab. I thought I’d made a break-through. I wanted to make certain.”

“Youth elixir? Rubbish. Sherlock Holmes would never deign to—”

“The grey hair I found in my pubes last week,” the girl muttered, blushing.

“No!”

“Oh, God!” exclaimed the girl, throwing her hands up in a familiar gesture before storming out.

John stared after her.

The girl stormed back in less than a minute later and slammed the door behind her.

What followed was a five-minute deduction of every patient waiting room.

“So, you’re clever,” said John. “Moriarty wouldn’t hire a half-wit.”

The girl got in John’s face and said coldly,

“You wear white men’s cotton underpants, but in the very back of the top drawer of your dresser you have a pair of very frilly emerald green knickers, which you wore—”

John put a hand over the girl’s mouth. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching the girl’s face.

“What in the hell is going on?” she whispered.

“—and if I’d said that they were pink,” continued the girl when John uncovered her mouth, “that would have meant I’d had to give the information up under duress. Please, John.”

“All right, all right, if it’s a trap, it is a good one. You’ve got her wallet, too?”

The girl nodded.

“Then let’s get you some clothes that fit.”

* * *

“Where’s Sherlock?” asked Lestrade as she burst in the sitting room.

“Barts,” said John.

“She’s not answering my texts. Uh, hello.” She turned toward the girl who was sitting in Sherlock’s armchair, idly plucking the violin strings of Sherlock’s violin.

“My niece,” said John.

“Really? Harry’s kid? Wow.”

“I’m Heather,” supplied the girl.

“Lestrade. Uh, I need Sherlock. Now. Case. Any chance you could—?”

“How ‘bout we go?”

Lestrade’s eye widened. “Uh…”

“Just until Sherlock can get there,” said John hastily. “My responsibility.”

“How old are you?” asked Lestrade of the girl.

“Sixteen. And you’re,” the girl squinted, “fifty-two, not the forty-nine that you claim.”

Lestrade snorted. “Oh, yeah, she’s Harry’s kid. Let’s go, but get onto Sherlock, John. Please.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

* * *

“Are you sure that’s your niece and not Sherlock’s?” asked Lestrade two hours later. I mean, she looks like Sherlock, sounds like Sherlock. She just solved my case like Sherlock, and she pissed off half the SOCOs just like Sherlock!”

“If she was Sherlock’s niece, whose kid would that make her?”

They exchanged glances.

“True,” admitted Lestrade. “That seems sort of incredible. I’d be more likely believe she was Sherlock’s daughter than she was Mycroft’s.”

John frowned.

Lestrade’s phone beeped loudly and angrily. “Oh, Lord,” she breathed as she read the screen. “Trouble.”

Eight hours later, John was back at Baker Street, washing her hands.

“You killed a man,” said the girl-Sherlock. “A man who was going to kill me.”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t a very nice man. And it wasn’t the first time, was it?”

She dried her hands.

“I think I’m, uh, getting a touch of adolescence, John.”

“Yeah, come here.”

John drew her into her arms and held her tight. “Sherlock, I will always protect you. I love you with all my heart, in whatever shape or size or form you happen to take. I can’t imagine what it is to be back in a sixteen-year-old body. I wouldn’t go back for a million dollars.”

“No?”

“Hell no! I surprised I survived the first time.”

John held her through sobs and shakes and sniffles. Then grey eyes met hers.

“No,” said John softly.

“Why not?”

“You’re still sixteen. If you stay this way for a couple of years, God help us, I’ll face the prospect of a foxy young girlfriend, but not like this.”

“You mean it.”

“I love you, Sherlock. And loving you means doing right by you. Now, about this potion or whatever you took, you said you think you can figure out how to reverse this thing?”

“I’ll need to go back to Barts, to the chem lab.”

“Who got you in before?”

“Molly.”

“Ask for another favour.”

“Ok.”

* * *

“I don’t see how it’ll work, Sherlock.” John was peering over her shoulder.

“Just wait, John—”

BOOM!

“John.”

Grey eyes peered down at her.

“Sherlock! Oh, God, big, beautiful, adult Sherlock!”

John clung to Sherlock, breathing in the acrid smoke and looking about them at the remains of the lab bench.

Sherlock grinned. “Puberty was as much a mess the second time ‘round.”

* * *

An hour later, two figures were on the roof of Barts.

“Here’s your fifty quid, Miss Holmes. You were right. It does get better.”

“Keep it. And the next time you’re thinking about stepping off the edge of a tall building, Heather, remember this. You won’t always be sixteen, and things won’t always be so horrid.”

“John…”

“Doctor Watson to you, miss.”

“…is quite…”

“Yes and yes. And I like her that way. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye. Thank you.”


	14. Scheherazade. (ACD. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Scheherazade  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Length:** 800  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
> Prompt: Musical Chairs. I picked Rimsky-Korsakov's [Scheherazade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQNymNaTr-Y).  
> Summary: An fan of Watson's storytelling stops by 221b.

“I am afraid Mister Holmes is not in at the moment…”

“Oh, no, Doctor,” said the lady whose hat, festooned as it was with leaping black ostrich plumes, crossed the threshold of the sitting room a full three seconds before its wearer did. “I’m here to see you.”

“Me?” I said with the slight trepidation always provoked by the possibility of an impromptu medical consultation.

“I am a tremendous fan “of your writing. My name is Matilda Blankensopp,” she said as I guided this fuchsia-and-black-swathed creature to a comfortable chair whilst trying to avoid her voluminous, slightly predatory crown. I felt a pang of pity for the old dear, hunched as she was, I imagine no chair could be truly comfortable.

“A pleasure,” I said, making to sit opposite her and pausing mid-descent, “Tea?”

“Oh, that would be lovely.”

I stood and rang for tea.

“I was passing the hall, you know,” I wasn’t certain I did, the metropolis having not a few halls, “and saw the publicity for tonight, that Russian fellow, and I said to myself, ‘Scheherazade,’ I must go by and tell that lovely Doctor Watson how much I love his stories, particularly the latest one.” .

She smiled. It was a smile as handsomely painted, and as ancient, I suspected, as a subject by Alma-Tadema. The rest of the face was mostly obscured by the brim of the hat and a half-veil.

Now things were clear. Holmes himself was at that moment scouring the city for opening night tickets. We’d been abroad when the concert was announced and had found none to be had by the time we’d returned, just two days ago.

“I’m very gratified to hear it,” I said.

“Such gifts with prose. Like the storyteller of the thousand and one nights. I especially like the bit about…”

What followed was very flattering.

Tea arrived.

“…such a musical quality, the way you arrange the words, convey the emotion of the scene. Just like that Russian fellow’s music.” She began to hum. “Oh, is that Mister Holmes’s violin?” She pointed a long, crooked finger, swathed in dark silk gloves and heavy with rings, at the seat of the armchair where Holmes had carelessly left his instrument and bow.

“Yes, it is. Uh, shall I be…?”

“Mother? Oh, do please. Rheumatism, don’t you know?”

As I rose and went to the tea things, the lady rose also.

“How does it, how does it go?” she muttered. “Oh, yes.” She hummed again. Then her voice dropped. “Like this, Watson.”

What followed was part miracle, part disaster, whole spectacle.

I turned to see the old lady’s hat and gloves and rings on the seat of the chair and the old lady herself stretched to her full stature, with Holmes’s violin and bow in hand, playing a happy melody wholly unknown to me.

I didn’t need to see the grey eyes sparkling with mischief, I saw the bare hands that I would recognise anywhere.

“Holmes! You blackguard!” I cried as the teapot tipped and the hot tea spilt.

“I’m very sorry, my dear Watson.” He lowered violin and bow and stepped towards me. “I had no idea you’d be so affected.”

I hissed, dropped with teapot with no elegance on the tray, reached for a towel, and began to dab my trousers.

“Taking the piss!” I roared.

“I meant every word, Watson.”

I ignored him. “And what’s with the Lady Bracknell?”

I looked up, glowering.

He smiled serenely, sweetly and, having set the violin and bow down, removed his wig.

“There are various philosophies of disguise, all with merits. One is camouflage. One is impersonation. One is distraction. That hat is the epitome of the last.”

“And?”

“And I did a favour for the producer and secured us two of the best seats in the house for tonight. Surely that’s recompense for a bit of,” he frowned at my trousers, “scalding. I also got to listen to a bit of rehearsal. It’s going to be fabulous night, really.”

My gaze narrowed.

“Please, my Scheherazade, don’t be angry,” he implored.

“You like my storytelling?”

“You know I do. The whole world does.”

“Well, I’ll bury today’s hatchet if you sit in that chair,” I pointed, “and listen to a story of mine.”

“Excellent!” Holmes eagerly lowered himself, perching expectantly on the edge of the seat. He made quite an ostrich himself, half in, half out of his Blankensopp.

I sat.

“A fellow goes to Vienna to pay his respects to great composers. When he gets to Beethoven’s tomb, he hears a strange scratching. Unable to restrain himself, he pries off the lid of the tomb. There is sees the long-dead master furiously crossing out notes on a piece of score.

‘What are you doing? the visitor cries.

Beethoven replies, ‘Decomposing!’”


	15. Cage. (BBC Sherlock Omegaverse. Gen. Drabble.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Cage  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Length:** 100  
>  **Notes:** Omegaverse. Hurt/comfort. Alpha!Sherlock/Omega!John.  
>  **Prompt:** “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.” (Ray Bradbury)  
>  **Summary:** Alpha Sherlock reconsiders his assessment of his own transport.

Insanity was relative, thought Sherlock as he watched John sleep. He’d always thought his transport, this ridiculous Alpha body with its absurd demands, a physical cage in which his mind was trapped.  
  
John stirred.   
  
Sherlock slid beside him and drew the silk off his own shoulder. He leaned in, putting the ridge of his shoulder near John’s lips.   
  
John sighed, then extended his tongue to lap at the skin which covered Sherlock’s scent gland. After a few licks, John rolled away, sinking back into a deep slumber.  
  
Sherlock now admitted he’d been wrong: one person’s cage was another person’s key.


	16. The Continuity of Ducks. [Link only]

**Title:** [The Continuity of Ducks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2155731/chapters/47141188)  
 **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
**Length:** 221b  
**Rating:** Gen  
**Notes:** Genderswapped. fem!Sherlock/fem!John. Retirement. Sussex!verse. The quote is from Dorothy L. Sayers, _Gaudy Night_.  
**Prompt:** No Dogs Allowed: Put an animal in the story – one other than a dog.  
**Summary:** A mishap by the pond.


	17. Gothic. (ACD. Holmes/Watson. Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Gothic  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Length:** 800  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **DW 2019 Watson's Woes Prompt: JWP #17:** Going Gothic: Gothic novels/Romance – a popular source of entertainment! Incorporate this genre somehow into your work today, or even create your own bit of gothic fiction! Bonus point if you go extra cheesy.  
>  **Notes/Warnings:** pre-Holmes/Watson. Sex (mild by my standards but YMMV). Non-consensual reading of your fellow-lodger's fic--the horror!!  
>  **Summary:** One night, Holmes discovers Waton's smutty, self-and-Holmes-insert, fix-it Frankenstein fanfic.

I rubbed my eyes and stretched, raising my hands overhead and reaching for the ceiling, the cramped muscles of my back protesting.  
  
I glanced at the clock and then at the only occupied seat before the fire.  
It was late, very late, and the good doctor had, once again, fallen asleep in his chair.  
  
Wake him up or tuck him in? I debated.  
  
Tuck him in.  
  
I stood and fetched the blanket draped over the back of the sofa. As I approached, I noticed a note-book had fallen to the floor and several sheaves of paper had escaped. I collected them.  
  
I caught sight of my name in written in Watson’s neat, careful hand on one of the pages. I quickly threw the blanket upon the sleeping figure and, when that act produced no reaction, decided to surrender to temptation.  
  
Watson’s gentle snoring faded into the background as I read.  
  
_…it is with considerable ease that I remember the original era of my being. The first act I remember with any certainty was to seek out my Creator, Doctor Sherlock Holmesenstein. Despite the strange multiplicity of sensations which seized me, I managed to find him. I drew back the curtain of his bed and discovered him fully clothed and lying atop the bedclothes in a state of profound sleep._  
  
He started from that sleep, and we beheld each other by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters. He gazed upon me with wide grey eyes and no little awe. New as I was to the world, I gazed at him, the source of my life, just as intently.  
  
At last, he threw his arms wide open. A grin wrinkled at my cheeks, and I muttered a noise and fell into his embrace. That night and every night that followed, he would study me with his hands, those hands which were so much finer than my own, which possessed a delicacy of touch that I’ve not known from anyone or anything since. He traced my features with his fingertips, brushed his palms across my cheeks, caressed every seam of my patchwork body.  
  
By day, he dedicated himself to my education and formation as a human being, but at night, he simply cherished me, observing my body, rubbing my skin, filling my ears with tender endearments and encouragements.  
The seams faded, and the skin became smooth and robust of colour.  
  
“That moustache suits you admirably. I should never be able to grow one so fine myself,” I remember him saying more than once, his voice dripping with affection.  
  
When I arrived at speech and coordination of movement, I mimicked him.  
He caught and adored each sound and gesture as if it were to announce a heavenly heralding to which he had so delightfully given life or the brush of an angel’s wings.  
  
Oh, how we drank in the beauty of each other’s countenance and physics!  
  
But after some weeks of this, I observed, one night, my Creator recoiled from my touch and rolled away from me abruptly. Gripped with anxiety, I begged his forgiveness and an explanation.  
  
He gave both, swiftly and sincerely.  
  
That was the first night of our love-making.  
  
He taught me how to kiss and soon declared that I was a prodigy at the act, far surpassing his own skill in but a few hours of practise. I have never tired of kissing him, but my mouth sought parts other than his lips. My hands joined my lips in exploration of my Creator’s form while he discovered the many ways that he could make my body stir.  
  
He taught me how to please myself and please him with my hand and mouth. Then he taught me how to mount him. He was ever profuse with his praise.  
  
I enjoyed his body as he enjoyed mine, and he called me his wonder, his miracle, his Science, his love…  
  
I jumped in my seat when the clock on the mantelpiece chimed two. A quick glance at Watson revealed him to be frowning and grunting and smacking his lips as if to wake.  
  
As stealthily as possible, I returned note-book and papers to the floor where they’d fallen and, abandoning my researches, flew to my bedroom.  
  
I hastily readied for bed, but, of course, as soon as slipped between the sheets, my hand was beneath my nightshirt, frigging myself as I recalled Watson’s descriptions. I came to crisis hard and fast. I cleaned myself and laid down once more. As sleep settled upon me, a tiny ripple of laughter bubbled up from my lips.  
  
Here I was, the world’s greatest living detective, and I had absolutely no clue as to how to proceed with such a romantic as was my modern Prometheus.


	18. Criterion Reviver [Link only]

**Title:** [Criterion Reviver](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6604225/chapters/47027443) (Chapter 167 of Cheers)  
 **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
 **Length:** 500  
 **Rating:** Explicit  
 **Pairing:** Molly/Moriarty  
 **Notes/Warnings:** Cunnilingus. Vaginal sex. Frank Sinatra tunes. Tap shoes.  
 **Summary:** Molly opens drawer No. 666 of the corpse locker.   
  
**Prompt:** Also Appearing Tonight - Sherlock Holmes: Spotlight a side character  
or an OFC; have Holmes and/or Watson appear or be mentioned, but only  
briefly (less than a paragraph, or a few sentences).


	19. Two Fucking Close to Water (ACD. Holmes/Watson. Crack).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Two Fucking Close to Water [which, for the unfamiliar, is the pun-tastic punch line to an old joke about how is American beer like a pair having sex in a canoe]  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Rating:** Teen  
>  **Length:** 500  
>  **Notes/Warnings:** Silly crack. Holmes/Watson. Oral sex (not graphic to me but YMMV). Lady pirates to the rescue.  
>  **DW Watson's Woes 2019 July Prompt #19:** Messing About In Boats: Include a water-based method of travel in  
> today's offering.  
>  **Summary:** Faced with impending death, shipwrecked Holmes and Watson decide to fellate each other in a rowboat. It goes about how you'd imagine.

The tiny rowboat was a lonely speck in the great wide sea.  
  
“Watson, I’m afraid that the probability that this adventure is our last is very high…”  
  
Watson released the oars and looked about them, groaning with despair, “I’m aware of that, Holmes. The bloody _Friesland_!”  
  
“…and as such I would very much like to suck your prick.”  
  
Watson gawked. “Now?!”  
  
“I’ve wanted to since the day we met. I was waiting for the opportune moment to suggest it, but I greatly fear I haven’t many more moments left from which to choose.”  
  
Watson’s lips curled into a wide grin. “You’re a madman, you know that?”  
  
“But?”  
  
“I’m going to let you have your wicked way with me, but don’t…”  
  
“Rock the boat?” suggested Holmes.  
  
Watson giggled. “Yeah.”

* * *

  
With careful attention to balance, Holmes leaned over the side and spit.  
  
“Thank you, Holmes. That was splendid. I hope you’ll let me return the favour.”  
  
“You needn’t if you don’t fancy it, Watson.”  
  
“Holmes, is this anytime for coyness?”  
  
“Apologies. Please, suck me, Watson! It’s my dying wish!”  
  
Watson chuckled. “Well, when you put it like that…”

* * *

  
Watson pulled off abruptly.  
  
“Holmes! You must get a hold of yourself at once!”  
  
“But, Watson, how can I? It’s too sublime. And may I just add that I’ve greatly underestimated your natural advantages.”  
  
One corner of Watson’s mouth twitched. “But you’re going to capsize us with this thrashing about!”  
  
“But what a way to go!” sighed Holmes.  
  
“Holmes!”  
  
“I’m sorry. I will make every effort to still my movements, except the one part, naturally.”  
  
“All right,” said Watson, smiling, “you try to hang on, and I’ll try to be quick about it.”  
  
A few minutes later, the boat was upside down, and Holmes and Watson were drowning.

* * *

“Pull! Pull! Pull!” chanted a voice.  
  
“Alive?” asked another.  
  
“Oh, yeah. Definitely a pair of live ones.”  
  
Holmes and Watson spilled out of the fishing net and onto the deck of the ship, coughing, sputtering, and retching.  
  
When they finally looked up, many sets of amused eyes were staring down at them.  
  
Suddenly, there was a gap in the ring of spectators.  
  
“Good afternoon, gentlemen! Welcome aboard the _Sapphic Delight_! I’m your Captain.”  
  
A doffed hat. A deep bow. A squawking parrot.  
  
“Holmes, we’ve been rescued by a ship of,” Watson raised his head and took in the Jolly Roger flapping in the breeze, “lady pirates.”  
  
“So it would seem,” murmured Holmes.  
  
The Captain grinned.  
  
“Oh, Captain! If I may?” cried a voice.  
  
The Captain turned. “What is it, Bos’n?”  
  
A figure scurried towards Holmes and rubbed a dirty thumb about his upper lip and eyebrows.  
  
Holmes gurgled a protest.  
  
“It’s Captain Basil of London!” cried the Bos’n.  
  
Gasps and murmurs went through the crew.  
  
The Captain nodded. “Welcome, Captain Basil and,” she winked at Watson, “friend. Then she laughed a wicked laugh and tapped the spyglass which was tucked under her arm. “You two were far too entertaining to let drown.”  
  
Whoops and cheers rang out.


	20. Losing Sleep. (ACD. Holmes/Watson. Fluff. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Losing Sleep  
>  **Fandom:** ACD  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Length:** 800  
>  **Pairing:** Holmes/Watson  
>  **Warning:** that ol' hoary trope: you're acting strange, you must be cheating  
>  **DW Watson's Woes 2019 July Prompt #20:** Working Cases in Your Sleep: Your work today should include an issue with sleeping (Somnambulism, exhaustion, insomnia, etc)  
>  **Summary:** When Watson unexpectedly takes off for Brighton, Holmes loses sleep.

**Gone to Brighton for a few days. Don’t worry. JW**  
  
Holmes read the message thrice. He had no intention of worrying but he was _thinking_.  
  
“Mrs. Hudson, did you see Doctor Watson before he left?”  
  
“Oh, yes, he blew in, packed, and was off again, just like that. Said he’d return Thursday.”  
  
“Anything unusual about him?” Goodness, he sounded like a jealous wife. Or a detective, he reminded himself.  
  
“Now that you ask, yes, he was moving a little oddly. Stiff. Or sore. I assumed his poor leg was giving him trouble.”  
  
Watson’s leg hadn’t given him trouble for years.   
  
“He says he’s gone to Brighton,” remarked Holmes casually.  
  
“Maybe he fancied a holiday,” Mrs. Hudson said dryly as she eyed the mound of dirty tea things. “He was with a gentleman from his club, or the bath, or somewhere, I forget. His companion waited in the hansom while the doctor got his bag. He took his medical bag, too.”  
  
It was Herculean effort for Holmes to keep his eyebrows from leaping.  
  
Had Watson unexpectedly gone on a seaside holiday with someone he met at the bath, perhaps, even someone who _made him sore_ at the bath?  
  
Holmes read the message a fourth time, rolled his eyes, and snorted. He needed to gather some more clay for his bricks.

* * *

“Doctor Watson was here for luncheon, sir, but he and a few of the other member left after that.”  
  
“Do you know where they went?”  
  
“Oh, yes, sir. They went to the bath.”  
  
“Northumberland Avenue, I suppose.”  
  
“No, I think it must’ve been the Jermyn Street one. Captain Carruthers is a member of that one, and he was the one encouraging the group.”

* * *

Holmes walked back to Baker Street. He was determined to let the matter rest. Watson was a man of the world. He also had his appetites. There was nothing surprising or disturbing about that. And he and Watson had no formal, spoken claim on each other in that respect. Yet.  
  
Holmes would most certainly not go down to the Jermyn Street bath and attempt to discover the identity of Watson’s bath companion. And he would also most certainly not lose any sleep over the matter. He would respect Watson and wait for a full explanation, which would no doubt come with time.

* * *

Holmes dove into a trio of cases simultaneously and for three days barely had time to change his collar.  
  
“Goodness, Holmes! You look like an utter wreck.”  
  
“Work,” replied Holmes, cursing himself for his sulkiness.   
  
Watson smiled and then stepped closer to Holmes and said, conspiratorially, “Might we retire to your bedroom? I’ve something to show you.”   
  
Holmes couldn’t help it. His eyebrows rose.   
  
Watson wanted to perform some wicked carnival trick he picked up in Brighton! The nerve!  
  
“Don’t look like that,” whispered Watson. “I’ve been aching for you. But I do have a surprise. Goodness knows what you’ll think, but I’m bursting to show you. I’ve gone and done something dreadful.”   
  
Watson’s tone was almost adolescent with giddy anticipation, and Holmes was won over.   
  
“Very well.”   
  
Holmes second-guessed himself once more when Watson began disrobing the moment the door was closed.   
  
“So the ‘Old Bromide’ at the club, Captain Carruthers, said there was a new fellow at the Jermyn Street bath who did the most magnificent tattoos. Dragons! A few of us were keen to see, so we went. I got to chatting with the artist and decided to get one. He said he could start something, but he had a gig at a spa in Brighton this week and I’d have to wait until he returned to finish it. On a rash impulse, I decided to follow the fellow and get the whole thing done, plus a day or two to heal up so that it would look a bit nicer for you.”  
  
Some of the pieces fell into place. Relief washed over Holmes.  
  
“Oh, Watson!” he sighed.  
  
“Oh, yes! What do you think?” Watson drew off his vest and turned sideways. “Over the scar.”   
  
Holmes eyes widened. “A phoenix rising from the ashes.”   
  
Watson nodded.   
  
“It is very well done.”   
  
“It is, isn’t it?”  
  
Holmes reached out a hand. “May I?”  
  
“Of course, you may. It’s so rare that I have the opportunity to really surprise you, Holmes. And I was afraid if I thought too long about it, I’d change my mind.” He cupped Holmes’s jaw. “I’m sorry if I cost you any sleep.”  
  
“Not a wink," Holmes lied.  
  
“It was just the cases?”  
  
“Yes, and they’re closed,” Holmes lied again.   
  
“Well, you look done in. Why don’t we retire early? Then I’ll sneak down and take care of you.”  
  
Holmes shuddered. Watson noticed.  
  
“ _Very_ good care,” he qualified.   
  
Holmes pressed his lips together then confessed, “I did worry, a bit.”  
  
“Don’t. I’m yours.”


	21. Vampire's Nightmare (BBC Sherlock Genderswap. Vampire. Rating: Teen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Vampire's Nightmare  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 1000  
>  **Rating:** Teen for a crime scene and references to blood and blood drinking. No sex.  
>  **Warning:** trope: deus ex machina. I couldn't actually turn my girl into a vampire.  
> Notes: Genderswap. Johnlock. Vampire!Sherlock/human!John. Vampire!Mycroft, too.  
>  **Prompt: JWP #21:** I’ve Got a Secret: John Watson reveals a secret he's been hiding his entire life. Bonus point if the secret is that Watson is a vampire.  
>  **Summary:** Even vampires have nightmares.

“It’s strange,” said Sherlock.   
  
“I thought so,” agreed Mycroft.  
  
Sherlock crouched and ran her fingers over the body. As it wasn’t a conventional crime scene, she felt no compunction about contaminating evidence. She probed about the inelegant gashes at the neck. She sniffed, then licked the dried blood.   
  
She tried not to gag. “Rats have been at ‘im,” she retched. Sherlock did not like rats.   
  
“Yes,” murmured Mycroft. She studied the tips of her Oxfords and wrinkled her nose. “But the other wounds and the positioning and the environs?”  
  
Sherlock’s fingers moved to the other cuts and bruises. She stood up and tilted her head to one side then the other as she studied the figure. She circled it twice. Then she glanced about the alley.  
  
“It’s strange,” she concluded.  
  
Mycroft huffed impatiently and rolled her eyes. “Anything else?”  
  
Sherlock shot her a look, then shrugged. “A new vampire.”  
  
“Yes, the feeding itself was amateur, but…”  
  
“…but, not a new vampire,” conjectured Sherlock.  
  
“Yes!” exhaled Mycroft. “Everything but the actual insertion of the fangs suggests a mature vampire. This is a vampire who knew how to kill and kill well.”  
  
Sherlock scratched her head. “Is this a philosophical question, Mycroft? When is a new vampire not a new vampire? And what does it matter? Even you can’t be expected to know every feeding pattern of every vampire in London. Someone new came to town with,” Sherlock looked at the body once more, her brow furrowed, “bad table manners.”   
  
“This isn’t the first, Sherlock.”  
  
“Who else?” asked Sherlock sharply.  
  
“Wilson.”   
  
Sherlock’s eyes widened. “Wilson is dead, and you didn’t tell me?! I’ve been hunting that ‘notorious canary trainer’ for days!”  
  
“He was found this morning.”  
  
“John will be thrilled when I tell her.”  
  
“Where is the good doctor, by the way?”  
  
“Edinburgh. Medical conference.”   
  
Mycroft nodded. “Well, Wilson’s body showed the same discrepancy. That is why you are here.”  
  
“Wilson was a perfect waste of five litres of O negative. What’s this one?”  
  
“He is what I believe is called a ‘social media personality.’”  
  
Sherlock snorted, then began to pace the width of the alley.   
  
“A seasoned vampire who is ill? Or who desperately needs to see a dentist?” she said aloud. “Or,” her voice quickened, “someone who somehow has got a lot of knowledge of vampires…”  
  
“…and has just gotten their very first set of long pointys,” finished Mycroft. “Find him for me, please, Sherlock. I don’t need to know every vampire in London, just the clever ones. And this one is clever. The knowledge of human anatomy and the knowledge of vampire behaviour is worth a chat.”  
  
“All right. With John away, it’ll be a nice diversion.”  
  
\---  
  
“John.”  
  
John turned and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “Finally.”  
  
Not for the first time, Sherlock cursed her nature. She couldn’t weep. She couldn’t bleed. Her heart couldn’t break. Then why did she feel as if all three were happening at once?  
  
“You led me on a merry chase,” she said weakly. “But once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains…”  
  
“…no matter how improbable, must be the truth,” said John. “I got Wilson.”  
  
“Yes. You got a lot of other people, too, John.”  
  
“I tried to be selective, but this,” she waved her bloody hands, “urge inside me. It’s horrible, Sherlock, horrible. How do you stand it?”  
  
Sherlock could barely stand at all. “When?”  
  
“Edinburgh. First night of the conference. On the way back to the hotel from the pub.”  
  
Sherlock tucked this information away for later. When you’d lived over a hundred years as she had, you could afford to serve your revenge very cold, indeed. And there were more pressing matters at hand.  
  
“I want you to destroy me, Sherlock.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I don’t want to be this. I wanted you to feed on me until, well, until I died an old lady in my bed. I never wanted to deprive you of your preferred existence.”   
  
“We’ll figure something out. The silver lining is that we’ll be together forever now.”  
  
“Killing humans. Feeding on them. I took an oath, Sherlock.”  
  
“John.”  
  
“Your sister will do it. She’ll destroy me if I ask.”   
  
The blood that Sherlock did not possess froze in her non-existent veins.  
  
“Maybe.”   
  
One corner of John’s mouth lifted. “She and I have already had our chat, Sherlock. I love you.”  
  
“NO!”

* * *

“NO! NO! NO!”  
  
Sherlock beat her fists and screamed.  
  
“SHERLOCK!”  
  
Light. Not sunlight. Just a faint light from the hall filtering in the bedroom, which was empty save for the coffin.  
  
The lid thrown off, Sherlock sat up, gasping for air she didn’t need.  
  
John brushed the dirt from Sherlock’s face and hair with one hand. Her other hand, the one that was raised, held a short, sharp knife.  
  
“You never come in here,” said Sherlock.  
  
It was true. John only ever peeked from the hall into Sherlock’s bedroom, furnished as it was with just a coffin filled with the dirt in which Sherlock’s human remains had been buried.  
  
“Yeah, well, you’ve never screamed in your sleep like you were being murdered. What was it?”  
  
“I had a nightmare.”   
  
John’s eyebrows rose. She lowered the knife. “Trapped in a garlic factory?”  
  
Sherlock narrowed her gaze. “No, you were a vampire.”   
  
“That _is_ a nightmare. I’d be a horrible vampire.”   
  
Sherlock shook her head. “You were a fantastic serial killer. You had everyone, well, almost everyone fooled.” Sherlock’s face fell. “John.”   
  
“Hey,” John wrapped her arms around Sherlock, then coaxed Sherlock’s head to her chest, “hear that? Still human. Still pumping your favourite.”  
  
For a few minutes, they remained like that, Sherlock listening to the beat of John’s heart. Finally, she said,  
  
“I can smell you, too, John.”   
  
John pulled away slightly and brought one arm down.   
  
Sherlock frowned at the knife. It was hardly an intimidating weapon for a human, much less a vampire or other villain of supernatural lineage.   
  
“What’s it for, John?”  
  
John smiled. She raised the knife, then her other wrist, and said,  
  
“Breakfast in bed.”


	22. Sweet Tooth. (BBC Sherlock. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Sweet Tooth  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 100  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Notes:** Features two of my head canons: one, that Lestrade has a weakness for sweet, syrupy American coffee drinks and two, that florentines are Sherlock's favourite kind of biscuit.  
>  **Prompt:** Sweet tooth: Today's entry should include candy/dessert/sugar/chocolate in some way.  
>  **Summary:** Sherlock tries to coffee-shame Lestrade. It backfires.

Sherlock sniffed. “That’s not coffee. It’s candy!”  
  
“Sure is,” said Lestrade, sipping. “And it’s even better when I lick it off your brother’s—”  
  
“AARGH!” Sherlock covered his ears with his hands.   
  
John giggled. “Don’t mind him, Greg. Sherlock’s got a huge sweet tooth.”  
  
“I do not!”  
  
“Then why were there florentine crumbs in the sheets this morning?” retorted John.   
  
“I just saw,” interjected Lestrade, “they’re rolling out a limited-edition Florentine Frappuccino next month.”  
  
“Ooo!” said John. “And I bet I’m going to be getting some licked off my—”  
  
“THIS MAN,” announced Sherlock, pointing to the ground, “IS DEAD!”


	23. Alba (ACD. Poetry. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Alba  
>  **Universe:** ACD [although it isn't very specific]  
>  **Pairing:** Holmes/Watson [but again vague]  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Length:** 215  
>  **Prompt:** Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, Remove the Impossible and What's Left Is True: Be poetic! Write a poem, or have the characters reference or quote poetry. Music lyrics count.
> 
> **Notes:** I have been wanting to try my hand at an alba (or aubade), which is a love poem about lovers parting at dawn. Alba! is the cry of the medieval watchman signaling the dawn.

Accursed dawn forbear your charge, your gentle glow’s no friend of ours.   
Abandon us, O dew-light barge! The milk-cart’s clip-clop curdles, sours  
our loving.  
Our dusk-bright ramble gamboled on to villainy unmasked and slain  
then midnight’s gambol rambled on to witchery by candle wane  
and shadow.  
Divested of the wares of day, embracing night’s clandestine sway  
with interlocking puzzle play, our dawn was moons (and swoons) away  
—or was it?  
The lips which cat-paw down my spine, the brush of fingertips divine,  
behind our backs, they alter time. Or is it conjuring of brine  
that does it?  
  
Oh, damn the milk, the mongers, too! Be still and let me do to you  
all that I’ve done, again, anew. Your cries will stave aurora’s dew  
and hush larks.  
The night is ours to stretch. Like this, like this, like honeyed bliss.  
Let all the constellations retch. Another kiss, another kiss,   
lover, please.  
False prophets, one and all, are they. Don’t let blind sentries spur your haste.  
Mad roosters crow to vex, betray all those who want just one more taste  
of bare skin.  
Much more than nocturne-veils that rise is seed-like anxiety in eyes  
now clearly seen. So, go, my love, and wrap night’s love in day’s disguise,  
work and din.  
  
A yawn, a dawn.  
  
Alba!


	24. More Men in Kilts. (Alt First Meet. Johnlock. Rating: Teen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** More Men in Kilts  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Pairing:** Sherlock/John  
>  **Length:** 600  
>  **Rating:** Teen   
> **Prompt:** Old Tropes Are The Best Tropes: Use or be inspired by one or more classic tropes in your work today. Examples of classic tropes include: they had to share a room and there was only one bed; it was a dark and stormy night; the doctor needing doctoring; ugly duckling turns into a swan; and so on. If you use one not in the examples, be sure to tell us what it is!
> 
> **The Trope is:** Cockblocking Mrs. Hudson.
> 
> **Notes:** This is a follow on from my Day 11 entry in which John works for the Men in Kilts housekeeping service. 
> 
> **Summary:** John (from the Men in Kilts housekeeping service) returns to 221b.

John carefully eased the folded ladder through the doorway, his exhaustion blunting the disappointment of not catching a glimpse of the gorgeous toff upstairs this time.   
  
“John.”   
  
Ah, there he was after all.   
  
John couldn’t help the smile which curled his lips as he looked up. “Hullo.”  
  
“It’s Sherlock Holmes, in case you don’t remember.”   
  
As if John hadn’t googled the handsome bastard as soon as he’d left the last time. “Yeah, I remember. You’re difficult to forget. ‘Dust is eloquent.’”  
  
Sherlock blushed and looked away. John caught a hint of a lisp when he spoke.   
  
“I have a very small problem if you’ve time. If not, quite alright…”   
  
“Certainly. But your landlady,” John nodded over his shoulder toward the door, “had a very big problem, and I’m a bit of a mess.” He wiped a hand down the front of his sleeveless vest which was plastered to his torso with sweat and decorated with smears of grease and dirt.   
  
Sherlock’s eyes follow John’s hand until it reached the waist of the kilt.   
  
John found the undisguised lust which darkened Sherlock’s features flattering and encouraging.   
  
“I don’t mind at all,” said Sherlock thickly, without taking his gaze from John’s chest. “You can even…if it makes you more comfortable.”  
  
Well, if that wasn’t an invitation!   
  
Aware that he was taking his cues from clichés in pornographic films, John set the ladder against the wall and slowly, very slowly, peeled off his vest.  
  
Give the lad a show if nothing else.   
  
“Let’s have a look, Mister Holmes.”  
  
Sherlock stared, then he snapped out of his fog. “Sherlock, please,” he urged politely before turning on his heels and leading John up the stairs.   
  
\---  
  
“But I was just here last week!” exclaimed John as he extended the duster into the corner of the sitting room. He gripped the top of the ladder with one hand and leaned farther to swipe the last thick ball of cobwebs. “How on earth did you manage to collect so much of this in so little time?”  
  
“It wasn’t easy,” admitted Sherlock. “Coaxing that many spiders up there.”  
  
John started and twisted sharply at the waist, the better to look down at Sherlock with wide eyes.   
  
The ladder wobbled, and Sherlock stepped forward to steady it. He looked up at John and shrugged, his face a picture of anxious but unrepentant mischievousness.  
  
“You did this?” John pointed at the crease where wall met ceiling.  
  
Sherlock nodded.  
  
“To get me here?”  
  
Sherlock nodded again.   
  
John laughed as he descended two steps. “That’s a new one. Go on then.” He nodded at Sherlock’s hands, which were still holding the ladder. “See what’s under the kilt.”  
  
Hands gripped John’s bare thighs and slid up.   
  
John looked over his shoulder once more to see Sherlock’s teeth bared and pinching his buttock through the plaid. He felt Sherlock’s hands moving up, up, up and curling ‘round his hips. He prick began to take a very decided interest in the matter until…  
  
“Hullooo! John! Are you still here?”  
  
Sherlock sprang away, sending the ladder into violent wobbles as John hurried to the floor and put his filthy vest back on.   
  
“Oh, John! Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Hudson, “You did a wonderful job, but I still can’t seem to get the thing to run!”  
  
“No problem. I’ll come down and show you. I think I’m done here?” John glanced at Sherlock, who gave a dismissive wave of the hand as he turned away.   
  
“If you need any help with setting all this to rights,” John continued, inwardly cringing at his weak tone as he made a gesture which encompassed the sitting room and kitchen, both as cluttered as they'd been on his first visit, “just call the agency.”  
  
Sherlock said nothing.


	25. The Second Musgrave Ritual. (BBC Sherlock Genderswap. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** The Second Musgrave Ritual  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Length:** 500  
>  **Notes:** Genderswap everybody (Sherlock, John, Mycroft and Reginald Musgrave from ACD canon). Jealous! & Pining!Sherlock. Good Big Sister! Mycroft. The plot of the ghost story is "The Thing Invisible" by William Hope Hodgson. Sherlock & Mycroft banter only. John is only discussed.  
>  **Summary:** Sherlock visits Mycroft after mulishly sending John alone to investigate a case about a ghost.

“Vox populi, vox dei,” mused Mycroft aloud as she let the newspaper fall. She took her feet from the corner of her desk and leant forward in her chair.  
  
Sherlock glanced at the screaming headline. “The British workman must be happy,” she said dryly.  
  
“How quaintly Victorian you are, Sister Mine—”  
  
“Says the person still reads _paper_ for news,” muttered Sherlock under her breath.  
  
“—all residents of our isle, the working and the idle, regardless of persuasion should benefit from the latest changes,” Mycroft tapped the newspaper headline, “but that’s not why you’re here. What is it? A fire? A proverbial one, I hope. Putting out actual conflagrations is not my department.”   
  
When Sherlock made no move to speak, Mycroft changed tactics.   
  
“Where’s John?”  
  
“Ghost-hunting!” spat Sherlock. She scowled at the arm of her chair.  
  
“Alone?”   
  
“Yes, I’ve got far too much going to be chasing after wild hares!”  
  
Mycroft hummed. “And just how did this hare come to your attention?”  
  
Sherlock stared at Mycroft and pressed her lips tight. The blood rose in her cheeks when she said,  
  
“Reggie Musgrave stopped by.”  
  
“Oh, ho!” exclaimed Mycroft. She leant back in her chair, bent her arms at the elbows, put her hand behind her head, and cast a wide smile at the ceiling. “Yes, that would explain it.”  
  
“It’s grotesque,” said Sherlock, her expression dark as thunder.   
  
“Just how long did it take for the good doctor to become smitten with Miss Musgrave’s deliciously malapert charms?” asked Mycroft.  
  
“How long did it take you?” countered Sherlock sharply. She made a noise of frustration. “I can’t see it.”  
  
“I know,” said Mycroft, still thinking of Reggie Musgrave.   
  
“It didn’t help that I’d just told John about the first case Reggie brought me. John was absurdly keen on that one.”   
  
“Who wouldn’t be? A castle, cryptic clues in a poem, and a bona fide treasure hunt. And I dread to ask, but what happens to be dear Reggie’s fresh horror?”   
  
“The ghost that haunts her great-uncle’s old Chapel has just turned dangerous. Yesterday it stabbed the old family butler with a medieval dagger which hangs above the altar. It happened in the presence of three witness, the rector and Reggie’s uncle and great-uncle, all of whom swear the weapon moved without human intervention. The butler didn’t die from his wounds, so the family hasn’t notified the police—yet.”   
  
Mycroft’s jaw dropped. “And you didn’t go because, what, you were jealous of her batting her eyelashes at your girlfriend!”  
  
Sherlock looked miserable. “John’s not my—!”  
  
“Whose fault is that? Bite the bullet, swallow your pride, and hie yourself forthwith to—where?”  
  
“Burtontree in South Kent.”   
  
“—and solve the mystery. Sounds fascinating.”   
  
Sherlock shifted in her seat.   
  
Mycroft watched, then a softness crept across her features. “It’s the perfect day for a drive—”  
  
“You mean besides the torrential rain,” interjected Sherlock.  
  
“—I’ll get the Bentley. It’ll be lovely to see ol’ Reggie.”   
  
Sherlock harrumphed, then whispered, “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **More Words, Phrases, and All the Things:** Use at least three of the  
> following words and phrases in your work today. Use all of them, and you’re  
> halfway to the All the Words bonus point for this year.  
> 1\. Blood  
> 2\. Thunder  
> 3\. The British workman  
> 4\. Rain  
> 5\. Bullet  
> 6\. "What is it? A fire?"  
> 7\. Vox populi, vox dei  
> 8\. Dread  
> 9\. Grotesque  
> 10\. Horror  
> 11\. Malapert


	26. Showdown (BBC Sherlock. Genderswap. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Showdown  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 230  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Notes:** Genderswap. Hurt/comfort. Sherlock/John/Mycroft. From my Three 'verse where John is soulmate to Sherlock & Mycroft.   
> **Prompt:** It Is July, After All: London can be brutal in the summertime. Let’s have some hot sweaty London and Holmes and Watson being hot and sweaty in it, all while trying to solve crimes and not strangle each other.  
>  **Summary:** A Bad Guy has Sherlock but the July heat is messing with John.

Damn this heat, thought John. The hand which held the gun was sweating, hell, the finger which was going to pull the trigger was sweating. Her clothes were plastered to her skin, sweat pooling at her lower back, her bruises just beginning to throb with the pulse of the sun’s relentless beating.  
  
The warehouse where they’d held her had been an inferno, but she’d escaped.   
  
And now they had Sherlock.   
  
John’s sight was poor, both from the beatings she’d taken and from the July haze which distorted everything like warped glass, but, really, she would rather shoot Sherlock by accident than watch some bastard slit her throat on purpose.   
  
Damn this London heat. They ought to be in the islands, the three of them, cool breezes, cool water, crisp nights perfect for…  
  
Christ, the heat was poaching her brain. Her soulmate, one of her two soulmates, the sister of her other soulmate, was about to be decapitated and here John was daydreaming.   
  
Take the shot, John told herself. Put this bastard out. Put Sherlock out. Do something. Don’t just stand here, trembling and sweating.  
  
Suddenly John felt an invisible hand staying her; afterwards she would not be able to say exactly what it was, something cool and heavy laying upon her chest.  
  
Sherlock blinked slowly.   
  
Once, twice…  
  
And down he fell.  
  
The shot hadn’t come from John’s gun after all.


	27. A Condition (BBC Sherlock. AU.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** A Condition  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Length:** 1000  
>  **Notes:** pre-Johnlock, *surprise* AU  
>  **Prompt:** A Most Unusual Patient: Watson receives an unusual patient whose  
> presence inspires today’s work.  
>  **Summary:** Sherlock shows up at John's surgery.

“Good morning, Doctor.”  
  
“Sherlock, if it’s a case, the answer is no. I can’t possibly abandon the surgery when I haven’t seen my first patient, my first real patient, that is, of the day.”   
  
“I am your first real patient of the day, John.”   
  
John blinked, then his expression changed. “You’re ill?”  
  
Sherlock spoke slowly and carefully. “I would like a doctor’s opinion about a condition that I have.”   
  
John nodded. “All right.”  
  
“I have a new flatmate. We are spending a lot of time together. We enjoy each other’s company. We compliment each other. We’ve grown close.”   
  
John smiled, tossed his clipboard on the counter, and crossed his arms over his chest. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”   
  
“It isn’t a bad thing. It’s the second-most extraordinary thing that’s ever happened to me, but…”   
  
“But?”  
  
“But he doesn’t know everything about me.”  
  
John frowned. “Everything or something in particular?”  
  
“He doesn’t know about my condition.”   
  
“Sherlock, drop the charade and just tell me what this is all about.”  
  
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me, so I’m going to show you. Then I’m going to Barts for the rest of the day so that if you want to move your things out…”  
  
“Hey, who said anything about moving out?! Sherlock, I’m a doctor. And your friend. There isn’t any medical condition that you could have that would make me do that.” John’s face flushed and he ran a hand through his hair. “And I thought of late, we’ve been…”  
  
“We have been. That’s why I can’t put off telling you any longer, no matter how you might react. I can predict a lot of behaviour, John, but what you’ll do next, what you’ll say next, is beyond me.”   
  
“Well, then, let’s get on with it and not prolong our mutual dread. Show me.”  
  
Sherlock removed his jacket and set it on the chair, then he untucked his shirttails and began to unbutton his shirt.   
  
John’s eyes danced about Sherlock’s bare chest, a corner of his mouth twitching. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”   
  
Sherlock dropped his shirt on top of his jacket and turned around.   
John’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve been cut!” He stood and reached out, then his professional instinct took over and he turned and snapped on a pair of gloves. “May I?”   
  
“Of course. That’s why I am here.”  
  
“One, two, three, uh, let’s see, eight slits in the skin. Two sets of four on either side of your spine.”   
  
“Nature loves symmetry.”  
  
John probed the edges of one slit. “Does it hurt?”  
  
“Not at all. John.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What happens next will make you doubt your own eyes.”  
  
“What? OH, GOD!”  
  
A grey tentacle emerged from each of the slits. The top pair were like ribbons; the bottom pair were like rope.   
  
John stepped back.  
  
“Sherlock!”  
  
“Not a joke. Or a hallucination.”   
  
“This is your condition,” said John hoarsely.   
  
“Yes. Do you see why I couldn’t let things go any further without telling you?”  
  
“Yeah, I get it. Can you control them?”  
  
“Mostly.”   
  
“Mostly!”  
  
“It’s an odd parasite-host situation. ‘They and I are one, and I am he.’”  
  
“May I?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
John extended a hand and one of the thinnest tentacles curled ‘round his index finger. He smiled and ran his other hand down the length of the tentacle until it disappeared into Sherlock’s back through the slit just under his left shoulder blade.  
  
“Smooth.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
John rubbed his hand up and down. “Can you feel this?”  
  
“Yes,” said Sherlock, his voice a bit strained. “They like it. I like it.”   
  
John’s breath caught when the rest of the tentacles suddenly whipped ‘round his wrist and forearm, encircling like coils of a constricting snake.   
  
“They won’t hurt you, John.” At this, the tentacles loosened their grip. “They’re just all keen to have the same attention.”   
  
John chuckled. “Like puppies.” One thin tentacle ruffled John’s hair. “They’ve personality.”  
  
“A bit.”   
  
John rubbed each tentacle in turn. “Do you do this?”  
  
“No.”   
  
“Not even when you…”  
  
“No.”   
  
“Then they’re starving for attention, aren’t they?”  
  
“I’ve never seen the point in encouraging them.”   
  
“That seems like taking the stiff upper lip a bit too far.”  
  
“You know, you’re taking this rather well.”   
  
John rubbed his dry lips to the tip of the base tentacle.   
  
“Fuck, John!”  
  
“Not as well as you are, apparently. All right.” John extricated his hands from the tentacles’ grip.   
  
“Home,” said Sherlock firmly. The eight retracted quickly into Sherlock’s body.  
  
“I’m going to freak out, Sherlock. I’m going to doubt what I’m seeing and what you’re telling me. But it won’t last for long. And, frankly, I’m more fascinated than anything else.” He stepped closer and kissed a spot between the two topmost slits. Then he ran both hands along Sherlock’s back. “I should definitely not be doing this in my surgery.” He exhaled. “How do they fit?”   
  
“They flatten.”  
  
“Really? That seems…”   
  
“Only highly improbable, John. I don’t want to be studied like an animal.”   
  
“No.” John’s hands kept moving up and down until the tentacles emerged once again. Working together, they formed a web behind John and pressed him to Sherlock.  
  
“They _really_ like you.”   
  
“I think the feeling will be very mutual, very soon. I assume one day you’ll tell me the whole story.”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Sherlock, I’m your friend and flatmate. They, this, doesn’t change that.”   
  
The tentacles released John abruptly, and he stepped back.   
  
Sherlock turned to face John. Four of the tentacles wiggled wildly about Sherlock, and four reached out to tickle John.  
  
John giggled. “Stop it!” Then he sniffed and took up his clipboard. “You’ve nothing to worry about, Mister Holmes.”  
  
“Thank you, Doctor. That’s really the best news I could’ve received.”  
  
“Are you still planning to go to Barts for the rest of the day?”  
  
“No, I’m going home to wait for my flatmate to return from work.”  
  
“Good idea. He’ll probably have a lot of questions. My prescription is honesty and patience.”  
  
“Sound advice, Doctor.”


	28. The fancy tea. (BBC Sherlock. Genderswap. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** The fancy tea  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 100  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Notes:** Genderswap. Johnlock.  
>  **Prompt:** The Needle, The Bottle, The Pipe: Everyone has an addiction of onevsort or another. Select one to spotlight in today's entry. This can also apply to side characters such as opium-smoking Isa Whitney or former-junkie Alfredo Llamosa.  
>  **Summary:** John has a bad habit.

“John, it’s an addiction.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“You must stop buying posh tea that you know you’re going to hate.”  
  
“But the tins are so pretty!” John shrugged. “I keep thinking that _this_ is one I’m going to like.”   
  
“You drink one cup, grimace—”  
  
John sipped and grimaced. “Christ, this is awful.”  
  
“—and then pour it down the drain or foist it on me and consign the very pretty tin to the graveyard of our cupboard.”   
  
John sighed. “I wish…”  
  
Sherlock kissed the top of her head. “I adore you just the way you are, John, Builders and all.”


	29. It's all been done before. (BBC Sherlock. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** It's all been done before.  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 221b  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Prompt:** Mind Your Jurisdiction: Crossover involving a crime investigator from another universe. (multiple Holmes' verses also OK) Bonus point if you use science!  
>  **Summary:** A case in Essex that is familiar.

“…I knew all along it was the husband,” said Sherlock. “It had to be. It was Mrs. Inglethorp herself who burnt the will. Why else would she light a fire on one of the hottest days of summer?”  
  
“That’s all very well,” said Lestrade. “But how did he administer the poison?”  
  
“He didn’t. His accomplice did.”  
  
John burst into the room, panting. All eyes turned to him.  
  
“Sherlock!”  
  
“John?”  
  
“I’ve got it! She put one of the bromide powders in the medicine a fortnight ago!”  
  
“Of course! Adding bromide to a mixture already containing strychnine would cause the strychnine precipitate to the bottom making the last dose also the final dose! Clever!”  
  
“We’ll have to get the lab to confirm that,” said Lestrade, “but how did you guess, John?”  
  
“I didn’t. I just bumped into a curious fellow in the garden. At least, I think I did. One minute he was there, talking to me, and the next minute he was gone. He might have been a ghost, though he’s the oddest ghost I’ve ever seen, egg-shaped head; elaborate, waxed moustache; dressed like a bit of a dandy. Anyway, he told me how it was done and said it had all been done before, here, at Styles. He had an accent. French, I suppose.  
  
Lestrade and Sherlock spoke at once.  
  
“No, Belgian.”


	30. His Loving Alpha. [Link only]

**Title:** [His Loving Alpha](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20049874)

 **Universe:** BBC Sherlock

 **Length:** 1600

 **Rating:** Explicit

 **Notes:** Omegaverse. Alpha!Sherlock/Omega!John. Sex.

 **Prompt:** **Hurt’s Over, Time to Comfort:** Watson’s been whumped (off-screen). How does Holmes and/or another take care of the situation afterward?

 **Summary:** After a case leaves John injured.


	31. The Demand of Man. (BBC Sherlock. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** The Demand of Man  
>  **Universe:** BBC Sherlock  
>  **Length:** 800  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Prompt:** Recycling Is A Good Thing: New to JWP and curious to know what prompts happened in earlier years? An old-timer and regretting a past prompt you really wanted to do and ran out of time? Today’s your lucky day!  
> Find a prompt from this year or a previous JWP and recycle that gem!
> 
> **Notes:** I picked this year's WW #14, which was the musical prompts, and picked a different song from the one I originally did. This time I did [The Demand of Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeBz3HxGsI).
> 
> **Summary:** Sherlock, as seen by John, contemplating and cracking a case.

John busies himself with making tea, but, in truth, he’s watching Sherlock.  
  
Watching a genius at work.  
  
Sherlock’s hands are steepled at his lips. He’s standing preternaturally still and staring at the case board, which is a detailed map of London beneath an arrangement of sticky notes and photographs and hastily jotted words in his own illegible scrawl.   
  
John imagines he can hear Sherlock’s mind sorting and re-sorting the information they’ve collected over the past three days. It sounds like the violin section of an orchestra, a host of bows softly but furiously sawing on a collective of taut strings. Sherlock’s mind, John imagines, looks like a grand Rubik’s cube, twisting, turning itself, trying to find patterns and grow them into recognisable shapes with significance.  
  
John contemplates taking a photograph of Sherlock like this. Surely, a snap of John’s phone wouldn’t disturb him, would it? Would he even hear it? Or notice? Probably not, but John errs on the side of courtesy. Still, he’d like a photo very much. He’d give it to an artist, one of those clever ones, to reproduce in black and white, some dry media like charcoal and pencil. He’d give it a pithy and inscrutable title like “The Demand of Man” and hang it on his wall upstairs.   
  
Sherlock sniffs and breaks his mannequin’s pose. He begins to pace before the case board, and the image of a tiger in a circus cage or a zoo instantly suggests itself.   
  
How can it not?   
  
John is silent. At one point, Sherlock casts a glance in his direction just before doing an about-face.   
  
No words are exchanged.   
  
A few more passes, and Sherlock makes a noise of frustration. He folds himself into his armchair and, with his fingers once again steepled, but now at his chin, he closes his eyes.   
  
John places a cup of tea for Sherlock on the far side of the kitchen table, aware that it will turn cold and be poured down the sink by John himself in an hour or, perhaps, a day. The certainty of its disposal undrunk in no way diminishes John’s compulsion to make it. John’s rituals for these periods are fewer but just as sacrosanct as Sherlock’s.  
  
John stands and sips his tea slowly and studies Sherlock’s face, wishing he could lift the lid of Sherlock’s head and look in. He thinks of a music box. Is there music in his Mind Palace? John smiles at the picture of a tiny ballerina doing a ceaseless pirouette.  
  
John turns back to the kitchen and sips his tea and fusses about, wiping things and straightening things. He looks over at Sherlock every now and then, but Sherlock might as well be a statue or a wax figure. Like Rodin’s sculpture but with a much posher wardrobe.   
  
John finishes his tea and washes up and is considering taking out the broom when it happens.  
  
“John!”   
  
It’s quite a soft noise, part sound, part breath, but as far as John’s concerned it is as loud and as alarming as a hunter’s bugle.   
  
Sherlock flies to the case board, his eyes darting about it, muttering, “Yes, yes, _yes_!”  
  
John grabs his gun and his jacket and follows Sherlock down the stairs.   
  
They aren’t running yet, but John’s heart is pounding. Indeed, all the chemical processes that ready his body and mind for danger are underway. He’s got the money ready for the cab in his sweaty hand and as soon as it slows, he is pressing the notes into the driver’s palm and hurling himself out of the vehicle.  
  
And then they _are_ running.  
  
They run at full tilt, John, doing his best to keep up with Sherlock’s longer strides. His lungs begin to burn, but he keeps close to Sherlock’s heels.   
  
It still London, but the city seems to fall away, and John imagines that he is a mythical being put to some test or charged with some impossible task.  
  
The music, that orchestra that was Sherlock’s mind, is barreling towards a massive crescendo, but he and Sherlock are simply running up flights and flights of stairs.   
  
When they reach the roof, John thinks they’ve reached the end. Surely whatever Sherlock was after is here.  
  
But no.   
  
Sherlock approaches the edge and looks down and over.   
  
“Trust me?”  
  
It’s the first thing Sherlock’s said, besides John’s name, in over four hours, but John’s reply comes quick and firm.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Sherlock reaches out his hand. John takes it.   
  
The next few moments are a blur.   
  
Running. Jumping. Falling, Catching. Clinging. Swinging.   
  
Landing on a balcony with potted geraniums.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t need to say it. John draws his gun as Sherlock slides the glass door open and announced cavalierly,  
  
“Sorry to interrupt the murderous little party you’ve going here.”


	32. Bucolic Charms (Poetry. ACD. Gen.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** Bucolic Charms  
>  **Universe:** ACD  
>  **Rating:** Gen  
>  **Length:** 98   
> **Poetic Form:** [Xenolith](http://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/xenolith/), which is essentially a 15 line poem made up of two separate, shorter poems woven together like fingers.   
> **Prompt:** Irrational Fears: Phobias are very real. Have a character suffer from a phobia.  
>  **Notes:** This is a canon fear of Holmes's about the countryside mentioned in "Copper Beeches": _They [dear old homesteads] always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of the July prompts! Thanks so much for reading! See you next year!

the rolling hills, bucolic English countryside  
beneath white fleecy clouds in spring  
no secrets shall they ever tell nor woes confide  
in strangers they like bees that sting  
not one survives to say just why old folks there bide  
beneath red and grey roofs set far  
and wide apart no town to mar  
the plein-air views from leisured lengthy horse-drawn ride  
the smiling beauty days unrushed  
in scattered dwellings bidding hushed  
discovery that somewhere, something, someone died  
uninterrupted undisturbed   
and killed unheard unbeknownst and unjustified   
repose ideal and unperturbed  
the hills roll on and leave the sleuthhound petrified

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
